montana_, Cuv.).

To this last-named species belongs the wild sheep of the Sierra.

Its range, according to the late Professor Baird of the Smithsonian Institution, extends "from the region of the upper Missouri and Yellowstone to the Rocky Mountains and the high grounds adjacent to them on the eastern slope, and as far south as the Rio Grande.

Westward it extends to the coast ranges of Washington, Oregon, and California, and follows the highlands some distance into Mexico."[1] Throughout the vast region bounded on the east by the Wahsatch Mountains and on the west by the Sierra there are more than a hundred subordinate ranges and mountain groups, trending north and south, range beyond range, with summits rising from eight to twelve thousand feet above the level of the sea, probably all of which, according to my own observations, is, or has been, inhabited by this species.
Compared with the argali, which, considering its size and the vast extent of its range, is probably the most important of all the wild sheep, our species is about the same size, but the horns are less twisted and less divergent.

The more important characteristics are, however, essentially the same, some of the best naturalists maintaining that the two are only varied forms of one species.